One of the great parts of our business is the places we go and the interesting people we get to meet.
In the early ’90s when diamond mania swept through Canada, I was a field geologist for “Mother C” — i.e. Cominco. After a couple of years of telling us that Cominco wasn’t a diamond company even as the discoveries in the Lac Des Gras area of the Northwest Territories were drawing world-wide attention, senior management finally decided we should try our hand at it.
We teamed up with “Big Brother” Teck and acquired a vast land package on the extreme eastern edge of the Slave Province in the Northwest Territories from Gerle Gold, a Vancouver-based junior company. We joked that we were a decade walk from where the heart of the action was at that stage, but we were “in the business of diamond exploration.”
Thus we packed our kits out of Yellowknife, took the 3.5-hour flight to what by anyone’s definition is the middle of nowhere (and then some) and set up our camp on the shores of Clinton-Colden Lake and began the daily chore of digging ice-cream pails full of dirt in a search for diamond indicator minerals.
We had helicopter support to move us from “target” (read: magnetic blob) to “target” (read: roundish magnetic anomaly).
Our only contact with the outside world was a weekly supply flight which brought the necessities of life — beer, bacon and TP — and the SBX-11 radio signals in the evenings.
Along with some of the best Northern Lights I have seen in my career, one of the truly great things about that project was the fishing. The lake was wide and loaded with char and grayling and it took little effort to catch a few. It thus became a bit of a habit to get up early each morning and, often with the camp cook, go out to the end of our “geo-special” dock and catch a couple of fish to have with breakfast.
Cominco and Teck’s “Camp Nowhere” diamond exploration camp beside Clinton-Colden Lake, N.W.T., in 1993. Credit: Darin Wagner.
Aerodat geophysical crew at the Cominco-Teck diamond exploration camp on Clinton-Colden Lake in N.W.T. in 1993. Credit: Darin Wagner.
On one particular sunny morning the cook and I were sitting on the dock catching breakfast when we noticed something way out on the lake that seemed to be headed our way. This was odd as there were no other camps, outfitters or bodies in this region that we were aware of and from a distance it was very hard to tell what it was.
Over the course of the next 45 minutes the object on the horizon got closer and closer and the number of bodies on the dock grew as the crew woke up and came to see what the excitement was about.
The late Mike Casselman, senior geologist for Cominco and co-leader of our intrepid expedition named the Doyle Lake project, at Clinton-Colden Lake, N.W.T. Credit: Darin Wagner.
Finally the object resolved itself into a single body in a kayak as it drifted into camp. The pilot was a somewhat haggard-looking fellow of East Asian background and he shakily made his way out of the kayak, onto the dock and in very badly broken English explained his story.
Our new guest was an air traffic controller from Tokyo. For the last three years he had been coming to Canada on his vacation to take month-long kayak trips through the north to enjoy the silence and solitude of the Arctic, which were such a stark contrast to the stress, noise and hustle of his home.
Over the course of a much appreciated breakfast he went on to explain — which for him took some serious effort — that he worked with a tour operator who had laid out a series of food and supply caches for him in advance and that this trip was to be his longest yet at 6 weeks.
Unfortunately a bear had made short work of his last supply cache, not only clearing out the food but also the batteries for his radio to alert the tour operator.
Thus he had been overjoyed when he spotted our camp on the horizon and had come almost a day out of his way to reach us. He had been running on fumes, fish and canned beans for the last 10 days.
A Teck senior geologist laying under his chopper flag to escape from the bugs while waiting for a helicopter at day’s end. Credit: Darin Wagner.
We offered to let him stay in the camp to recover a bit but he was adamant that he needed to move on and get back on schedule if he was going to complete his trip and get to his extraction point on time. So we loaded him down with supplies, a re-charged battery for his radio and shotgun shells for his gun as he had used the last ones to chase away the bear who had raided his cache, and by mid-morning he was on his way again across the lake, slowly receding into the horizon just as he had appeared.
Unfortunately nobody I have reached out to has any pictures of the fellow. I think we were all so blown away by him being out there that we failed to document it on film.
We didn’t see him again but did hear from the tour operator that he had completed his journey. That should be the end of the story but about a week after Christmas that year, a small box arrived in the office from our new friend in Tokyo with a note of thanks, Christmas wishes and a very nice bottle of sake.
So even in the middle of nowhere, our careers provide us the opportunities to make a difference for someone and to make a new friend. Even if they are a bit crazy.
— Darin Wagner is president and CEO of Balmoral Resources, a Canadian junior gold and base metals explorer active primarily in Quebec.
FYI: a similar solo boat trip through the Barrenlands taken by a traveller in 2011:
wow! a fabulous adventure. Thanks!
I so much remember camp times in the Arctic (and elsewhere). It was fun to read this. Thanks, Darin. All of us should write more stories like this for odds ‘n’ sods. Hell, nobody else gets it, what being in those camps mean to us.